The Advice Business: Essential Tools and Models for Management Consulting

For courses in consulting. The dramatic growth of the consulting industry in the last 20 years can also be traced to rapid changes in technology that have provoked dramatic changes in the ways companies compete. Consultants provide companies facing such rapidly changing environments with an important means of developing, acquiring, and processing much-needed know-how. Increasingly, then, consultants have proved to be a vital strategic weapon that companies rely on to improve their competitiveness in a world characterized by technological convergences, strategic consolidations, and growing interdependence. The Advice Business introduces readers to the art, the practice, and the problems that consultants face. The book sheds light on the complex roles that consultants and consulting firms play in enhancing the effectiveness of their clients. - Contributions of both academics and practitioners to this emerging field. - Relies on the literatures of strategy, organization, and change to frame discussions and analyze problems. - Original case descriptions based on real consulting assignments. - Career advice.